Thursday, September 18, 2008

10 Things Vista Has and Ubuntu Doesn't!

I recently tried Vista and I must say I'm impressed. Sure Vista has its own faults, but there are many lessons for Ubuntu to learn from Vista:

1. Search which works: Vista has this amazing search capabilities which lets you search every inch of your PC ( thanks to the kick delivered by Google Desktop) and surprisingly 'It Works' every time you use it. It even supports natural language input like, "Show me Bob's email, sent yesterday". Ubuntu too has a software called Tracker. It is meant to track all your files and faithfully fetch them when you search for it. At least that's the theory. In reality Tracker rarely works. In my experience with 5 installations of Ubuntu, Tracker has never worked. I have tried each and every trick in the book to make it work, but it never even manages to retrieve even one file.Ubuntu, please make it work.

2. Backup and Restore: Vista and XP have this useful functionality by which you can restore your PC back in time, in case you muck things up. Sure, it does tend to restore even things like Virus and Trojan Horses, but most of the time it manages to do its work efficiently. In Ubuntu if you muck some thing up, its back to the basics (Installing the OS) . Ubuntu must have such functionality!

3. Cool Looks: I'm not talking about the lame Aero here. Honestly, Steve Jobs would suffocate in his tight Turtle-neck T-shirt if he ever used Compiz. I'm talking about the mature and good looking desktop. Even die hard Ubuntu fans know that Ubuntu looks damn ugly, sure the Heron wallpaper was beautiful, but come on guys, brown and orange on desktop looks ugly! How about using some cool colors for splashing onto our desktops. We are frankly tired of seeing the same brown turbid thing. Changing the theme is one of the first things we do, you know. How about getting some load of our back? Don't even talk about fonts. Is it that difficult to make SegoeUI look alike fonts for open source?

4. Disk Partition: Vista has an easy to use disk partition tool which makes disk partitioning a cinch! Since Ubuntu is used by a geeky crowd it seems odd that it doesn't ship in with a disk partitioning software.

5. Calendar: Most of us use calendar on a daily basis. I personally use Google Calendar and sync it with Windows Calendar. Ubuntu should include any decent calendar which can sync with Google Calendar.

6. Advanced Snipping Tool: Vista upgraded the lame 'Print Screen' function to include a robust screen capturing utility. Ubuntu has a not so option rich 'Capture Screen' utility. Ubuntu snipping tool only allows you to specify the time after which it will take the capture. Of course you do have Gimp, but guys how about some 'rectangular selection' tool?

7. Parental Controls: Vista has good parental control options. Currently in Ubuntu the only way parents can 'Hide' anything from their kids by using the '.' (dot) trick. To hide any folder you have to append a '.' before the file name, as in '.Home'. Although it does have one advantage that, 'kids' won't be able to hide anything from their parents.

8. Quick Shutdown: On my PC Vista takes around 4 sec to shut down, where as Ubuntu takes around 1 minute. The situation is expected to change in Jaunty Jackalope.

9. Media Center: Now a days (OK, change that to since past few years) PCs are becoming the new Entertainment center of our life. Vista has Media Center, which is head and shoulders above anything like it. Ubuntu should come with such software.

10. Decent Names : Vista sounds very cool for an OS (which didn't turn out to be so cool). Even XP was a half decent name, hell even Windows 95/98 are many times better than the crap names that Ubuntu selects for its OS. Edgy Eft, Gutsy Gibbon, Hardy Heron, Intrepid Ibex and now Jaunty Jack@ss (sorry Jackalope)! Hell, they don't even use some cute names like 'Innocent Iguana' or Jolly Jackal. Industries would obviously be wary of using Gibbon OS, even if it the Gutsy Gibbon.

Even names like Sexy Scarlett (Johansson), Perky Paris, Arousing Alba would do wonders!
My favorite among these would be Kute Kiera (Knightly) and Kracking Kate (Winslet).

11. Speech Recognition: Vista's speech recognition is very cool. I wonder whether it can be replicated in Open source.

21 comments:

4 -> Have you ever tried GParted? It is really easy. It is so cool I use it even when I don't need to.

5 -> As far as I know, Evolution already has it.

7 -> Man, there is cryptography!! =D Appending a . before the file AND making it secure using cryptos is the way to go, because if you only make it a hidden folder, well, there are a lot of linux tutorials over the net which can explain how to use the ls -a / cd commands...

8 -> Every Ubuntu I installed, including my own, shutdown in 15 secs or so. I onyl had problems in shutdown with Slackware, which was really, really bad doing that.

9 -> Well, I don't think it should be "preinstalled" or something, I'd hate to use a media center, really. Is a bloat app just to listen to music or watch a video, but, I know, it's just my personal opinion. But anyhow, there's Elisa and installing things in Ubuntu is very easy.

Gparted is far superior than Vista's partition manager which is hidden in control panel and is obscure. Most Vista users use Linux based partition tools to repartition their drives. Ubuntu repos has Shutter screen cap which blows any or every screen cap utilities to weeds, Windows or Mac. Jaunty boots way quicker than Vista as well as shuts down way faster. As for cool names, since MS only releases a new OS every five years, Ubuntu needs to have far more names available at their disposal and neither Apple, Vista nor Jaunty sounds cool. As for media center, most of those I know who are on Vista look for lighter faster XBMC which incidentally is a open source app and works fine under Ubuntu. If you think either of the parental controls you have listed work, you are underestimating today's resolute and determined kids.

Part of the reason that Ubuntu doesn't have these features is in fact that it isn't extremely bloated.Most of these features are fixable by installing what you want, or cusomizing. Microsoft preinstalls everything... but I think I'd like installing Google Desktop instead of using a broken search tool.And I think gtparted is excellent.People typically know that if they want something, they can search for it and install it.The One-Size-Fits all approach is slightly adopted for easy adoption on Ubuntu, but it's not all included.Compiz is better than most other effect libraries, and I find gnome extremely useful and fast to use.(nautilius and gedit (I write nearly all my code there) are outstanding with a little or no customization.)

The guy obviously has a very superficial knowledge of linux. In fact every statement he makes shows not knowledge but absence of one. With the same success I can compare Cinese and Japanese languages while knowing nothing about them :)

Wow. You're an idiot. Don't go bashing Ubuntu (and all other Linux distros for that matter) if you don't even know how to use it! Every 'missing fature' you said is available for Linux. And seriously... there is NO WAY that "Vista" sounds cooler than "UBUNTU"!

iampriteshdesai, please learn your arse from your elbow before speaking on topics you know nothing about. Funny how "Windows Enthusiasts" often have little technical knowledge and have never actually used any other OS for more than 10mins.

I first used Windows for 5 years(Programming, web-development, troubleshooting all it's bullshit) and always wondered why computers were so complicated and unreliable.When I started using other operating systems I realized it wasn't computers that were shit, it was just Windows!

Vista is really WAY cooler than Ubuntu IF You don't mind the 3+ minute startup and the 4+ minute shutdown. WMC is fairly wonderful IF you purchase all video content through a Microsoft authorized vendor or it shuts down every time you try to open a folder that contains vid that you have downloaded from other sources. It is also great if you don't mind having it shut down between shows. Long time windows user here, tired of all the extra work I have to do every time I start this OS. Scanning for viruses, looking for malware and generally trying to get a little extra speed. You and people like you are the reason people like me are considering the move to some distro of Linux. Enjoy your MicroCrap.

linux' restoring process is far better than vista: just select from the grub the proper menu. from there u can repair broken packages, restoring the whole os, checking stuff etc. Also u can adjust things in the packages manager without restarting EVERY TIME.also linux (unlike vista) checks disks integrity regularly. this is particularly useful if u are confident with a faulty hd like i used to. I wound up losing all my vista stuff.

I dunno what you smoked, but you clearly missed the power of the Internet and thereby some features of Ubuntu. So:

1. I don't use GUI search, not because I'm a CLI (command-line-interface) fan, but usually I don't search blind, so I can narrow down the location/name/content. So 'find' and 'grep' is enough for me.

2. Okay, that might be true, I haven't searched for time machine type softwares (Anyway, have you ever used it? I don't even know what it does when I have modified two files, but I only want one of them restored...) Based on my current experience I would solve this problem with a distributed version control software. Anyway, if you do it the nice way, in Ubuntu you only have to backup your /home/ folder, as nicely behaving softwares write all config under that folder.

3. That is a big NO. Use KDE desktop, or explore a bit more on the GNOME/Compiz combo.

4. GParted - 'nuff said. Try it out.

5. Ok, that's a miss for me, too.

6. I use Shutter.

7. Huhh? You sure have grown up on Windows... On Ubuntu, people (I mean, "users") on the same computer don't see each other's shit by default. If you have 2 users: "Daddy" and "Kiddo" then Kiddo will see something when Daddy shares it with him. But it is best not to underestimate kids, maybe he just puts in the computer an Ubuntu live distro, which mounts the NTFS partition, and gives a shit 'bout parental control.

8. If your Vista shuts down in 4 secs, then I'll pay your beers for the rest of your life. Or you just boot in, without firewall, virus checker, etc. and immediately shut down, with an SSD installed, of course.I have a solution: shut all your app down, and SUSPEND. It is never the shutdown time that matters, but the boot time.

9. That might be true for torrent junkies. Media Centers should sit right before/above/under your big huge flatscreen TV as Entertainment "center" should mean that not only 1 man watches/listens to movie or music.

10. Well, investigate further. These names are codenames for the development phase only. Officially released Ubuntu distros are named like your tags: 9.04, 9.10 and so on. These numbers represent the Year and Month of the release date, which cannot be known beforehand. So every soon-to-be distro has a codename. And you might be surprised to hear that Windows versions have this codename thingy as well:So what about "Mönch", "Trainyard", or maybe "Bobcat"? "Mönch" actually made me laugh my ass off, giving me 5 minutes happiness.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames

Jeez you guys. All of this was true once. Don't bash the poster just because you can't read dates. Remember the old "Mac sucks because there is no right click" routine? Yeah, I bet you do.

All operating systems are targeted at certain social levels. Everyone in my AC Theory class uses Windows 2000 and Ubuntu. Ubuntu for IDE programming and free software that works fast and Windows 2000 for the CAD software. And my friends in my Film class use Mac. So what? OS's are all getting better because we have authors that complain about what they don't have or what we would like to be made better.

That's one thing I like better about people that use Linux. They document and ask tons of questions. On the other hand, Linux users get too cocky sometimes.

Go get a girlfriend/boyfriend instead of posting about how big of an idiot someone is. Thinking that you rock at software development and are "up" with the times is pathetic. There's always so much you don't know.

Oh, and the poster above me. Karatedog. Now that's a comment worth posting. Even if it is two years late. the internet is so vast people are always stumbling onto old topics.

You are a disgrace to Unix users. Yes, that's right, you are using a Unix variant. Try learning about Unix. "The only way to hide files is to prepend a '.' to the name". Are you kidding me? The entire philosophy of Unix is to be a multi-user system with file-system level permissioning. Try "man chmod". Oh wait you probably have never seen the command line before. It's the scary black thing with no pretty graphics and nothing to click on. You have to use the keyboard. Check it out, it's like texting, but to your operating system. Don't be afraid.

I have got Windows 7 and I also have Linux Mint 9 installed alongside it on both my laptops.I find that the system restore-recovery on Windows 7 is a lifesaver and has got me out of trouble many times. When I have made mistakes on my computer. Linux Mint has a recovery mode on the boot loader-Linux Mint generic recovery mode but it is not the same thing. This only repairs packages and the system,not resets it to an earlier time.So if I do make a mistake on Linux that cannot be put right,I have to uninstall and re install Linux again. I wish Linux did have system restore like Windows does. This would be so useful.Andrea Borman.